Month: February 2017

IRL, this morning I placed the following 6-page single-spaced letter in the inbox at the rental office. Real talk: This is _______, resident of _________. Before saying anything else, I want to be clear that I’m not writing this out of a desire to have drama and conflict with people. I was specifically asked to…

The autistic community sort of doesn’t have it’s shit together right now, but the neurotypicals better watch out as soon as we come up with a plan and get used to leaving the house again. The last time autistic people were in charge, they called us “the clergy.” We made all the lists of rules…

To preface this post, I want to re-emphasize the song Bad Religion – Inner Logic: A sequence of 3 autism diagnoses happened for me, really. My therapist diagnosed it, I thought about it and self-diagnosed, and then I went and got a bureaucracy-grade document whose point is recommendations for workplace accommodations. One of the recommendations…

Theory of mind in children with autism spectrum disorder: do siblings matter? Autism Res. 2013 Oct;6(5):443-53. doi: 10.1002/aur.1308. Epub 2013 Jul 10. Research indicates a positive relation between the sibling constellation and theory of mind (ToM) development in typically developing (TD) children. Less is known about this association in children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD).…

This whole post is a perfect description of what it’s like to “go out and do things.” To contribute my own example, I think I’m the only person who still goes to new places using early Mapquest methods. I spend a lot of time on Google Maps, looking at aerial photos and half-memorizing the sequence…

1994 was the year Asperger syndrome was added to the DSM, so that’s the earliest I was theoretically diagnosable. Despite my dad being an LCSW with a current license (sigh…), and despite me getting a PhD in psychology in 2010 (sigh…), I was only diagnosed in 2017. I realized that one thing I did get…

5-HT1A-receptor agonist modified amygdala activity and amygdala-associated social behavior in a valproate-induced rat autism model. Accumulating evidence suggests that dysfunction of the amygdala is related to abnormal fear processing, anxiety, and social behaviors noted in autistic spectrum disorders (ASDs). In addition, studies have shown that disrupted brain serotonin homeostasis is linked to ASD. With a…

This post reminded me of an earlier post about the childhood realization of being black. Cadence: Does being autism make me bad? Angela: What makes you wonder if being autism makes you bad? Cadence: Grown ups always say it’s hard being mum or dad if your kid is autism and it said on the TV…

I took the WAIS-IV as part of getting diagnosed. The numbers themselves were less interesting than the pattern: I’m average at everything except having abnormally high verbal comprehension. I’m clearly bad at social everything, but not the worst. I’m basically polite. As long as I’m mindful or hypervigilant, I can remember to make eye contact…

Before I knew I was autistic, I wondered what autism felt like. When I started to suspect I was on the spectrum, I looked for YouTube videos to compare notes. This is one of the first ones I watched: That’s not what it’s like for everyone to go to a restaurant with a big group?!…